My time in China has been highly-productive and I am extremely grateful to the CAS PIFI program. During my stay in Beijing in the lab of Professor Zhu Chaodong, I have made a number of important contacts and been involved in many collaborations and larger projects. This has led to many publications, including as high-impact first author in Ecology and Conservation Letters, co-author of the Journal of Economic Entomology, and a book chapter. I have also provided several talks during my stay in China, and have hosted collaborators from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) institutions in Argentina (Michael Orr from CAS’s Institute of Zoology and Alice Hughes from CAS’s Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden). I cannot overstate my thankfulness for the support of the PIFI program and the lab of Dr. Zhu.

There are many academic achievements that would not have been possible without the support of the PIFI program. We have developed a comprehensive and systematic bee sampling scheme to analyze the impacts of invasive honey bees on native bee communities. We found that invasive honey bees’ dominance not only has negative consequences on the abundance and species richness of native bees but also on overall bee abundance. Contrary to expectations, honey bees did not have stronger negative impacts than other native bees achieving similar levels of dominance. These effects were markedly consistent across crop species, seasons, and years, and were independent of land-use effects. Dominance could be a proxy of bee community degradation and more generally of the severity of ecological invasions. These methods can later be used for collaborations in China.

With Dr. Zhu, we looked at key conservation issues relevant to CBD COP15. We focused on providing relevant scientific information for international agreements, which aim to conserve 17 percent of Earth’s land area by 2020 but include no area-based conservation targets within the working landscapes that support human needs through farming, ranching, and forestry. Through a review of country-level legislation, we found that just 38 percent of countries have minimum area requirements for conserving native habitats within working landscapes. We argue for increasing native habitats to at least 20 percent of the working landscape area where it is below this minimum. Such a target has benefits for food security, nature’s contributions to people, and the connectivity and effectiveness of protected area networks in biomes, in which protected areas are underrepresented. We also argue for maintaining native habitats at higher levels where it currently exceeds the 20 percent minimum, and performed a literature review that shows that even more than 50 percent of native habitat restoration is needed in certain landscapes. The post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework is an opportune moment to include a minimum habitat restoration target for working landscapes that contributes to but does not compete with initiatives to expand protected areas, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

During my trip to China, I have thankfully been lucky enough to work throughout North China’s Shanxi Province, giving lectures and visiting research centers, natural areas, and agricultural producers. The experiences I have had in these areas have given me a much better, broader view and appreciation of Chinese culture. I will never forget my time in China, and I am currently hoping to continue my studies with great collaborators at CAS’s Institute of Zoology, Beijing, including future visits.

Source: Lucas Garibaldi,

Institute of Zoology,

Chinese Academy of Sciences